This chapter establishes the core concept of ‘Romantic surgery’ by exploring the distinctive emotional, intellectual, and performative dimensions of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British surgery. It opens by considering how, building on the legacy of John Hunter, Romantic surgeons constructed their practice as ‘scientific’, grounded in the study of anatomy and physiology. This allegedly more scientific approach to surgery encouraged greater operative restraint, but so too did the emotional regime of Romantic sensibility, which valorised the feelings of the patient and stressed the need to temper personal ambition with emotional sensitivity. This had profound implications for the performance of surgery, as surgeons were encouraged to eschew operative bravura in favour of a more considered deportment. As this chapter demonstrates, such emotional considerations also extended to the spectacle of surgery, as surgeons were expected to manage not only their patients and themselves, but also their audience. The performative persona of the Romantic surgeon was not without ambiguities, however, and this chapter therefore concludes with a study of perhaps the era’s most contested figure, Robert Liston.